My mom emailed me the other day which is particularly significant since it is our first correspondance in a few years. I still haven't replied, which makes me feel bad but I don't know what the hell to say. She started the whole thing off by lying to me about how she got me email address, which is such a petty thing and it's precisely the pettiness of it that is so offputting. Why lie? There's no need to. I don't care which one of my siblings you probed for the necessary information. Just don't tell me that you guessed what my fucking address was. I'm not dumb. And then the rest of it was just a series of offers: she'll give me the furniture she has in storage, she'll help me move, she'll let me use her van, she'll give me a place to stay if I'm ever in need, she'll take care of my dog if something comes up and I can't. And that's all just fucking wonderful, but after years of not talking, she forgot to ask me how I'm doing. She forgot to ask me what's new. And by not telling me about anything that's going on with her, she denied the fact that I don't know who the hell she is anymore. She silently denied the fact that the relationship we had before has disintegrated and that we need to start over. The other thing that made me cringe was that everything that she offered was something that I already have. I already have a support system; I have a family that will make sure that I have what I need, that will always let me come home, that will help me out with petty shit like moving and things far more monumental. Whats more, I have a family with a van bigger than hers. And it feels almost as if she is assuming that I'm being pushed out by my parents and that they are nothing but oppressive. And how dare she assume that she has any idea what my life and my sitaution is like when the distance between us is so huge?

My dad flipped out when he found out about it and made it a point to apologize repeatedly for her being so dysfunctional. Why he felt he needed to apologize on her behalf is beyond me. He sure as hell never apologizes for his own problems. And then after dinner he pulled me aside and forced me to listen to his line of crap about how my mother is essentially the most fucked up person walking the face of the earth and is incapable of really loving anyone, but that HE loves me more than anything and HE will always be there for me and his greatest honor is to be my father and that he loves being able to experience my happiness vicariously (such a fucked up thing to say). And those might all sound like nice things to say, but put in the context of the greater family dynamic and mized with his pathetic tone of voice and his facial expressions and his crying it just becomes one overwhelming guilt trip. And I already had a sizeable guilt trip that came nestled between the lines of my mom's goddamn email-- I didn't need another one. But that's the way my parents work-- you have to choose one or the other, mom or dad, to devote you loyalty to and I'm so sick of their bullshit.

It all makes me realize that if it weren't for my step-mom (who I refer to as my mom, but I'll make the distinction in this case in order to make things easier on you, the reader) and her mentally stable influence, I would be seriously fucked up.

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